"fareed zakaria gps" is next with tom donilon's final interview as nsa director. this is "gps," the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. we'll start the show with an exclusive with tom donilon, president obama's national security adviser. today is his last day in office. he sat down with me for an exit interview. we talk about edward snowden, the nsa, russia, china, syria, iran, and reflections on his teen you are at the president's side. then, 24 years ago andrew sullivan laid out the first major intellectual argument for same-sex marriage. the idea was controversial at the time. today it seems inevitable. we'll talk to him about this fascinating journey. and the rhodes scholarship of the 21st century. that's what one of america's

wealthiest men says he has just started. at yale, harvard, princeton, stanford? nope. stay tuned to find out where. then africa, not one but two american presidents visited there this week. chinese president xi hit it on his first trip abroad. i will give you my views on the hottest continent. but first here's my take. one who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty. that was martin luther king jr.'s definition of civil disobedience. it does not appear to be edward snowden's. he has tried by every method possible to escape any judgment or punishment for his actions. snowden has been compared to daniel elsburg, the man who leaked the pentagon papers to "the new york times." but elsburg did not hop on a plane to hong kong or moscow once he had unloaded his cache of documents.

he stood trial and faced the possibility of more than 100 years in prison before the court dismissed the case against him because of the prosecution's mistakes and abuses of justice. ma hot ghandi spend years in prison in their native land. while snowden is no hero, his revelations have focused attention on a brave new world of total information. we're living with the consequences of two powerful interrelated trends these days. the first is digital life. your life today has a digital signature, where you eat, shop and travel, whom you call, e-mail and text, every website, cafe and museum you have ever visited, it's all stored in the great digital cloud. and you cannot delete anything ever. the second is big data. americans were probably most shocked by the revelation that the u.s. government is collecting massive quantities of their digital signatures,

billions of phone calls and e-mails and internet searches. the feds aren't monitoring every last one, but they could easily, and that is the essence of the age of big data. in their excellent book, "big data," they write about the police in richmond, virginia. they track criminal incidents against a variety of events. corporate paydays, sports events, concerts, gun shows and dozens of other possible triggers. and the computer then identifies patterns. for example, two weeks after a gun show, there is always a jump in violent crime. now, multiply this example by thousands and you understand what the nsa computers are doing. they don't use samples anymore, but rather the entire data set. and they don't try to construct al go rhythms or logic trees to predict an event, they just look through the data for correlations. as they point out, if computers

can make predictions based on data analysis, should we prevent bad actions by arresting people before they act? remember the movie "minority report"? but it's not justification. the nsa program p.r.i.s.m. aims to identify suspicious patterns to allow the government to prevent terrorism. that is, to act before a terrorist event takes place. a research project at the department of homeland security that tried to predict terrorist behavior based on people's vital signs, physiological patterns was 70% accurate according to the authors. as far as we know, the u.s. government has bken no laws with all of this surveillance. it has followed all established procedures. congress approved these programs, though it did so in secret, writing laws that aren't public. shouldn't we know more about the actual checks and balances for this kind of surveillance? the larger question "big data"

raises is this. should any government be permitted to use computer analys analysis, even if highly accurate, to observe, inform, quarantine or even arrest people because they are likely to do something bad? that seems like a scenario from a sci-fi thriller, yet here we are very close to a real world version. for more on this, go to c. in n.com/fareed for a link to my column in "time" magazine. let's get started. president obama's first meeting every morning is with tom donilon, the national security adviser. donilon briefs president obama on his portfolio, which the president has said is literally the entire world. henry kissinger said he believed on this program that donilon fulfilled his job superbly.

on friday he sat down with me for an exit interview. tom donilon, pleasure to have you on. >> thank you, fareed, good to see you. >> i've got to ask you first the news of the moment. >> okay. >> do you have assurances from the russian government that edward snowden is not going to be allowed to stay in russia and that he will have to go somewhere else? >> i'll say a few things about that. number one, the view of the united states and the position of the united states that we've been pursuing is that snowden should be returned to the united states. he is not -- he has a revoked passport, he's not traveling on valid papers and he should be returned to the united states because he's wanted here for a crime. we've been in discussions through law enforcement channels with the russian government on a regular basis about this issue. and i have to agree with president putin when he said the other day that it would be better for mr. snowden to decide when he's leaving, sooner rather than later. we agree with that. the sooner that this can be resolved, the better. >> but you don't have a specific

assurance that he will not be allowed to stay in russia? >> well, he's currently been in the transit lounge, as you know, in the russian airport. and these discussions have taken place in law enforcement channels, which i think is the place for them to take place. you know, as the president said yesterday, we have broad relations with russia. we have a lot of issues to work through with russia and other countries. this is appropriately, i think, in a law enforcement -- in a law enforcement channel. >> but isn't that signaling to the russians or as it did perhaps to the chinese that this is not an urgent priority? "the washington post" had an article saying the administration gambled that it could -- use entirely legal channels to address this issue rather than putting diplomatic and political pressure on both the hong kong and chinese authorities and the russian authorities and in both cases, the article argues the strategy failed. >> well, we've had a lot of conversations with the russians about this through a variety of channels. but the principal channel really is the law enforcement channel.

we have had a history of law enforcement issues being resolved effectively, including cooperation on the boston marathon bombing with the russians, and that's the appropriate channel. and again, i think president putin's point, this should be resolved sooner rather than later is correct. >> so there will be no great consequences for the chinese and the russians if they don't cooperate? >> let's see where this ends up. as the president said yesterday, this is a law enforcement issue. this is -- we have broad relationships with both the countries that you mentioned. very complex set of relationships. a number of things that we have to work with these countries on. and they shouldn't be dominated, frankly, by a single law enforcement issue involving, as the president said yesterday, a 29-year-old hacker. >> we have an election in iran with a seemingly moderate reform-minded president. first, do you read it as such? and secondly, is the united states going to take advantage of that opportunity and present

iran with some kind of negotiated package that it can live with? >> the united states from the outset has indicated that it would sit down with iran and talk about the nuclear issue face to face and in a bona fide fashion. the elections were interesting in iran. they reflected among other things the state of the iranian economy, which in turn, of course, reflected the effectiveness of the sanctions that the united states has led and the west has put on iran, and there were discussions about the west. the economy and the situation in iran is not going to get better unless iran takes policy changes, which would improve its relationship with the west. >> but now will the united states propose some kind of package that there has -- presumably in any negotiation there has to be something in it for the iranians. we know what we want them to not do. what do they get? what's the upside? >> there's a lot in this for this iranian people and i think this is what the iranians have to consider. we have had numerous discussions with the iranians.

there are any number of proposals that can be put on the table and they are awaiting an iranian response. but what will have to happen is two or three things. one, we'll have to see if iran is willing to come to the table in a bona fide way and address the international community concerns about the nuclear program. if they do that, we've indicated that we can have a discussion about iran over time being integrated back into the international community. if they don't come to the table andy ga engage -- >> what does that mean? >> well, i don't want to negotiate through a television interview, but there are a number of things iran would have to do to satisfy the international community about its peaceful intention with respect to to its nuclear program. absent that, the pressure will continue. but the choice now is with the administration in tehran and the choice ultimately, of course, will bow with the supreme court leader, who will have to decide

whether we're at the point where his public -- he can be responsive to his public in terms of change, in terms of change in policy which can allow us to move forward. >> we will be back in a moment, more with tom donilon on other hot spots of american foreign policy and some personal reflexes. ♪ norfolk southern what's your function? ♪

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and we are back. more now of my exit interview with the president's national security adviser, tom donilon. this is his last day in office. >> let me ask you about syria. the president has seemed to have a disciplined attitude about whether or not to get involved in syria and not commit the united states, and then a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like that shifted and all of a sudden there was a determination that because there had been a use of some chemical weapons at one point on the battlefield, the united states was now suddenly much more deeply and actively engaged. is that the appropriate yard stick by which the united states should determine whether or not to commit itself? >> we've had a skpichconsistenty in syria in terms of supporting the opposition. the president did say that the use of chemical weapons would cause us to take changes, and

they did in terms of the scale and scope of the assistance that we're providing to the opposition. stepping back on searia, it's a tragedy. i've been to syria many times. and for assad to wreck that country, its heritage and impose the cost it has on its people is appalling. and we have from the outset organized the international community to support the opposition. we have been the leader in the humanitarian assistance, now $850 million worth of humanitarian assistance. we have said for a long time now that we would support the opposition and we are supporting the opposition and we're trying to work with various parties trying to get them to the table to pursue a political solution. we press the point that it is in everybody's interest to try to get a succession to get a political process going. >> but you have no luck with the russians yet. that photograph of putin and obama at the g-8 seemed to say it all. >> well, i was at the meeting

with president putin and president obama. they agreed, as you know, during the course of that meeting on pursuing the geneva 1 agenda, which is a conference that would lead towards a transitional government. we have not been able to get that scheduled at this point and put together, but we continue to work with the russians on that. but we do share the goal of putting that together. president putin did sign on to a g-8 statement calling for an investigation of the use of chemical weapons by the united nations in syria. but we have had a disagreement with the russians over the tactics here. we've had a disagreement with the russians over what is required to move toward a political settlement. i think our analysis has been right, frankly. our analysis from the outset has been that the longer this goes on, the more difficult this was going to become. the longer this goes on, the longer it would take on sectarian character. the longer thangs goes on, you'd find al qaeda-related entities finding their ability to take

root there. >> there have been books written already about the obama administration's foreign policy and some of them place you at the absolute center, give you enormous amount of influence and in fact one book says that the white house and you had too much influence and drowned out the voice of somebody like hillary clinton and richard holbrook who were taking very different perspectives on afghanistan, particularly. how do you respond to that? >> we have had from the outset of the administration a very strong group of foreign policy principles. and none of whom would be, quote unquote, drowned out. we have at the principals committee that i led here, you would have the vice president of the united states, joe biden, secretary clinton, general petraeus, leon panetta, bob gates before him, richard holbrook when he was with us. it was a very strong group of principals. and indeed one of the things that i am quite happy with over the last four and a half years

is that we have not had the historical norm. the historical norm is that you have a tremendous amount of public conflict among very high-profile and strong-willed national security principals. we haven't had that in this administration, very little of that. the reason i think is, is that president obama has insisted that we run a process here where it's effective, views are heard and the president gets them directly. so i just think that's wrong. i think we've run a process here that has been fair, where the evidence is overwhelming that the principals thought that it was fair because we haven't had this public bickering that we've had in the past. you and i could go through some of the famous cases over the last 35 years. and you've done it not with shrinking violets but rather with some of the most prominent national security figures and political figures in the united states. indeed, you know, i would be at meetings on a number of occasions where there would be three people at the table who

ran against each other for president. so i would -- >> biden, obama, clinton? >> yes. so i don't think valerie has got this right. >> you've been working at this white house since president obama was elected. what was your -- what was the last day that you had a full day of vacation? >> a full day off? christmas, 2008. >> so what are you going to do right after this? >> what am i going to do after i finish my work? well, i finish -- i guess this will air on sunday, so i finish on midnight tonight, and then we'll hand over the reins to ambassador rice. and then i will head up to new england to the beach for a while. >> you've worked for president carter, you've worked for president clinton, you've worked for president obama. what do you think is the key -- you know, if somebody would want to understand how president obama approaches foreign policy, what would you say is the key

difference or the characteristic of this president? >> yeah, i don't want to compare presidents. as you said, i've worked closely with three presidents over the last 36 years or so. one of the keys to being able to do that is not to engage in comparisons in a public forum. but i can say this about president obama. he is strategic, very determined in terms of understanding fully the problems that the country faces. he is a very efficient and effective decision-maker. he insists on rigorous process, as i said. he insists on seeing all the options fully developed. he insists on hearing from his advisers. and has asked the same question over and over again, what's in the national interest? and very importantly, and this depose back to your question on

syria, for example, asked not just what would seem to be a good idea today, but how does this play out two and three and four steps down the line. and i've seen this now, again, close up for four and a half years. >> tom donilon, thank you very much. and thank you for the work you've done for the country. >> thank you, fareed. it's great to be here. up next, what in the world, a look at the fastest growing continent in the world. it is not asia. we will be right back. had this or 30 years. we raise black and red angus cattle. we also produce natural gas. that's how we make our living and that's how we can pass the land and water back to future generations. people should make up their own mind what's best for them. all i can say is it has worked well for us. starts with freshly-made pasta, and 100% real cheddar cheese.

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now for our "what in the world" segment. it's rare enough for a u.s. president to visit africa. this week, two of them are there, president obama, of course, but also his predecessors, george w. bush. the two visits are unrelated, but the focus is common. how do engage with the world's fastest-growing continent. africa was for many decades the dark continent or the hopeless continent, as the economists had put it. more recently it has become the great hope of the business world. the economists updated its take to "africa rising." the world bank recently said africa could be on the verge of a takeoff, the like the china's 30 years ago.

africa's recent growth has been impressive and important, but let's step back and get some perspective before we break out the champagne. ♪ first, the case for optimism. growth. as population stag nats or declines in europe, japan and china, africa's population of one billion is expected to more than double by 2050. more people means more consumption, more production, more growth. african economies grew on average around 6% last year. that's three times the pace of america's growth and faster than many asian countries. a new world is opening up to africans as they get used to credit cards and mobile phones. they are also becoming economically more free and more democratic. but there are hurdles ahead. the world economic forum's new africa competitiveness report shows that of the 20 least competitive economies in the world, 14 are african. what this means is that african economies are blighted by low

productivity. african economies may be growing for now and from a very low base, but they are overdependent on commodities. more than half of the continent's total exports are minerals, a focus which makes it vulnerable to fluctuations in global demand. more than two-thirds of africa's labor force is employed in agriculture, much of it subsi subsistence agriculture. on the other hand, manufacture, the hallmark of a developed economy, has essentially remained stagnant. its share of total gdp is the same as what it used to be in the 1970s. the africa economic outlook, published by the african development bank and others, builds on some of these points. it turns out that if the world's rich countries experience a 1% drop in growth, that translates into a 10% drop for africa's export earnings. in most african countries, economic and political reforms have stalled, corruption remains staggeringly high and the

private sector is much too tied to government favors. as attention centers on the great nelson mandela's life and legacy, south africa is languishing. annual growth fell to less than 1% in the latest quarter. youth unemployment hovers around 50%, a recipe for future crises. what to make of all these facts and reports? south africa's case is a warning for the rest of the continent. african countries have immense potential, but they need a continued commitment to bold reforms, transparency, free markets and trade. perhaps the most crucial thing to watch is how africa deals with its greatest resource. not oil, not minerals, but people. africa's share of the world's population will rise from 1/7 to about 1/5 by the middle of the century. if africans get the right access to education, health care, good governance and jobs, africa will

be a powerhouse. if not, the population growth is a curse, not a blessing. this week's visits by obama and bush are important, but what african countries need is not so much external attention, but internal reform. up next, a big milestone for gay marriage in america. i'm going to speak to the man who made the case for it more than two decades ago, and he's a conservative. we'll be right back. to recog ve been aroh out there owning it. the ones getting involved and staying engaged. they're not afraid to question the path they're on. because the one question they never want to ask is "how did i end up here?" i started schwab for those people. people who want to take ownership of their investments, like they do in every other aspect of their lives.

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...and we inspected his brakes for free. -free is good. -free is very good. [ male announcer ] now get 50% off brake pads and shoes at meineke. i'm candy crowley in washington, getting you up to speed on a story we're following in egypt. massive demonstrations taking place today against and some for the country's president, mohamed morsi. we went to go to rez asaya who is outside in egypt. >> reporter: candy, the drama and anticipation is building as thousands of people make their way to the presidential palace. we are anticipating mass protests against president morsi on the anniversary of his presidency. these are the liberals, the moderates who say the president and the muslim brotherhood have hijacked the revolution and pushed everyone aside.

across down, more opposition factions protesting. a short drive away from us, the supporters of the president are demonstrating. the concern is in the common hours if these two demonstrations cross paths, there's going to be violence. candy? >> reza, clearly there is some worry inside the presidential palace as we were told earlier, there will be a news conference we expect probably shortly, but it will not be from president morsi himself. it will be by the spokesman from president morsi. reza sayah, ben wedeman, all of them in cro for us. we are following the story. we will stick with it and get back to you. now back to fareed zakaria gps. coming up at the top of the hour, howie kurtz's last "reliable sources." the august 28, 1989, issue of the new republic magazine had a controversial cover. it featured an artist's rendering of a wedding cake but

with the figure of two men on top. inside was a ground-breaking essay by andrew sullivan, then seen as an ardent conservative laying out the case for same-sex marriage. it's a reminder of the ultimate importance of intellectual work, which often lays the foundation for things that later happen in the so-called real world. given this week's historic supreme court rulings on the subject, i asked sullivan to come on and talk to me about his essay and where we are today. welcome, andrew. >> thanks, fareed. >> so tell me about when you wrote that essay, because i remember it. we knew each other then. it was controversial, and it was controversial in the gay community. >> oh, yes. >> right? >> gay marriage was -- i spent the first ten years battling the gay left. i was picketed, attacked. i was called the anti-christ for proposing this. >> and why did they not like it? explain. >> because the gay movement then was very much a product of the new left, of the late '60s and

early '70s. they believed that their goal was to uproot existing institutions and to dissolve marriage. and to go there and say, no, we have a right to marry, we should have a right to marry they thought was hetersexist, right wing, fascist, so we were for the first ten years just kicked continuously by the gays. until suddenly from the ground up, and i'm talking about the establishment, the ground up, the gay men who had been cut off from their husbands in hospital rooms in the aids epidemic, people who had suffered horrible indignities, people who had been with their spouses and thrown out of their house by relatives thereafter, denied access to the funeral, no rights, whatever, and lesbians started having babies. so this actually created a skpil yancy on both on death and life to secure our relationships, to

take care of our children, to take care of our spouses. >> that's what my impression was, that you were fighting a kind of -- looking from the y outside, there was an activist community that was more left wing and that it was more important to be bohemian, but your argument seemed more in accord with what the majority of gays probably wanted, which is just a normal life. >> i was challenged by a lot of left wingists by saying we reject marriage. we don't want to have anything to do with this. my response was, with all due respect, you don't reject marriage because you cannot. because it's never been offered to you. i'm fighting for your right not to marry as well as to marry. but you're right -- >> you don't have to get married. >> you don't have to. straight people don't have to either. but look, we're part of families. gay people don't -- they're not born under something in san francisco and unleashed on the country to improve your dinner

party conversations and interior design. that's not what happened. they're born and bred in texas and oklahoma and alabama, they're in the military and they're part of this country's entire diversity. and they want to be a part of their own families. and they're more traditional than you realize. >> so then began the battle you're still battling which is with conservatives. >> yeah. i think the great disappointment, the great disappointment is that this was a really in some ways a conservative argument. this was a minority group seeking responsibility, commitment, pooling resources. if you're a couple and something happens to one of you, you have someone else to take care of you, not the government. there's a really powerful conservative case for this. and so many of the republican party just never grappled with it until it was too late. but kennedy, a reagan appointee, i think you see the last strains of that moderate conservatism

which is, you know, we do have this new emergent population. how do we integrate them? how do we make them part? i don't want us to have a separate but equal institution of civil unions, and that was the big threat. and then bush, when he actually endorsed a federal marriage amendment, suddenly the entire gay establishment were like, okay, we're with you. it was like -- >> if bush is against it, we were for it. >> yes, bush -- i would like to say that my arguments or whatever, evans brilliant strategy really persuaded the gay community. but no, i thin george bush by endorsing the most unbelievably draconian, to actually write us out of equality in the constitution itself, unprecedented attack on an minority, galvanized everybody around this issue. >> do you worry that there will be a right-wing backlash of the kind that roe v. wade produced for the next decade or two?

>> no. i think that backlash happened. we're sort of in a backlash lash at this point. and because this decision was not as sweeping as roe versus wade. it still allows every state to make their own decisions. my worry is that there will be an overplaying of our hand, and that people will try and force this more quickly than we really should. what i'm proud of so far is that we have done this the right way. we have done this state by state. we've done it legislatively, we've done it through argument, through that kind of -- what the founders wanted us to do. make our case bit by bit, persuade more and more people and move that forward. i don't want anybody's religious liberty, i want that to be defined as maximally as possible. we do not threaten and should never threaten the conscientious

beliefs of those who disagree with us but we should welcome their freedom because it's our freedom too. and so i'm very concerned actually that we may become intolerant of people who believe homosexuality is still sinful. and we have to -- we have to live by -- >> you want to be tolerant of their intolerance? >> yes. because i think in the end that's the only way to solve it. i mean i'm a christian. i really believe in the end in this matter. you up the ante and start calling them bigots and trying to coerce them, you're as bad as they were to us. and we must never do that. >> andrew sullivan, pleasure to have you on, and congratulations. >> thanks, fareed. up next, the rhodes scholarship of the 21st century. my next guest says it will take students not to the u.k., but to china. he'll explain, steve schwartzman, the ceo of blackstone, up next.

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a very successful british businessman named cecil rhodes set up a scholarship to bring students from the british colonies, the united states and

germany to study at oxford. the idea was to promote international understanding. 110 years later, a very successful american businessman named stephen schwartzman set up a scholarship to bring students from around the world to study in china. the idea is also to promote international understanding. schwartzman is the chairman and ceo of blackstone group, a firm that has grown from having $400,000 of assets to over $200 billion of assets today. steve, good to have you on. >> it's good to be here. >> i've got to ask you about this big initiative that you have made in china, a program which will bring students from all over the world, the best and the brightest, to china in the way that the rhodes scholarship brings people to oxford. >> that's correct. what we're trying to do is take 200 people from around the

world, 45% americans, 20% chinese, and 35% from rest of world, top 20 economies basically, and have them some to the university in beijing. the reason that we're doing this is because i'm concerned about what happens if china continues growing at double or triple the rate of the west. the west unbalance with producing jobs. china is producing ten million jobs a year. with the burdens on governments and west, people are going to become more and more unhappy just generally. they're not so happy at the moment anyhow. if they see one country, which is now the second biggest economy in the world, china, growing rapidly, the tensions are going to go up because people seldom blame themselves for their own underperformance. it's always got to be somebody

else that did it to them. as and china becomes a focus as the u.s.' largest creditor and there becomes hostility between china and the rest of the world, if that occurs, not over a year or two but over decades, you could have major trade problems, major economic problems, and potentially military problems. >> how does this -- how does this solve that? >> by the way, before we get to the solution, those problems are already occurring between china and japan, between china and europe on certain types of products. the schwarzman scholars is designed to create leaders, actually people who are already highly accomplished, like the rhodes, and have them come to china, meet the leaders of the country, take trips around the country so they get a sense of it, be assigned a mentor from the real world so that they know

how the real world and china works. and so when the issue of china comes up, they can be the people who explain what china believes, what china's intention is on an individual thing so other people won't get angry or aggressive unnecessarily. >> so you've got this vast array of companies operating in the united states but all over the world. what's your take on how the u.s. economy is doing? is this recovery real? >> i think the recovery is real. you have a number of real strong areas in the economy, housing, for example, is very widespread recovery. we're the largest owner of houses in the united states among the many things that we do, and we can see the housing market strengthening across the country. we've got auto, which is now

doing 15 million cars a year, up from 8.5 at the bottom of the financial crisis. so we're seeing pockets of strength. >> why do you think that this -- these very strong results across the board in many sectors don't translate more into jobs? why is it that while corporate profits are doing well, you still have -- it still seems tough to get the unemployment numbers down? >> i think there's a lag. i think business is cautious. and i think we'll get that increase, particularly as construction starts coming back. it won't be radical, but if you're running a major business today, you have the uncertainty of the new obama care being implemented, you have tax reforreform of virtually every skeechbl type being discussed, it's more

difficult to make longer term plans when you don't know what the rules are. >> you have been critical of president obama in the past, very critical in some cases, at least the reported comments have you saying pretty strong stuff about him. do you think that the things still are pretty bad in the sense that are you still -- you still feel president obama's policies are hurting the economy? >> i think he's -- frankly he's a very nice guy, and i get along well with him as a person. i have a different philosophy on certain issues. i think it's equitable that when a country is in trouble, if you have tax policy, everyone should bear some load with the people at the top bearing the most and the people at the middle bearing less and the people towards the bottom bearing very little. but to basically have a tax increase that only affects

one-tenth -- excuse me, 0.9 of 1% of the population with income tax increases strikes me as an odd way to get the country together. we can't solve our budget problems by fundamentally excluding almost everyone in the country. those numbers don't add. >> steve schwarzman, pleasure to have you on. >> my pleasure to be here. up next, have you ever thought parisians are not very welcoming to tourists? whether it's true or not, france has a plan to correct that impression. you'll want to see this. "and one of tt efficient trucking networks," "with safe, experienced drivers." "we work directly with manufacturers," "eliminating costly markups," "and buy directly from local farmers in every region of the country." "when you see our low prices, remember the wheels turning behind the scenes, delivering for millions of americans, everyday.

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president obama's trip to africa brings me to my question of the week. south sudan was the last african state to gain independence in 2011. which was the second to last country? a, aratria, b, zimbabwe, c, namibia or d, botswana. go to cnn.com/fareed for more of the gfs challenge and lots of insight and analysis.

remember to go to itunes.com/fareed if you miss a special. this week's book of the week is "sleepless in hollywood." why are so many movies sequels and prequels and part threes and fours. this is a entertaining book with a message. now for the last look. the world's most visited city this year is not paris. paris would like to be number one, since tourism is a huge contributor to the french economy. so the city of lights is taking on its problem with urgency. the parisian chamber of commerce started a campaign on the web and in printed pamphlets called "do you speak tourist" and it's targeted at shop keepers, taxi drivers restaurant and hotel workers. it offers suggestions on how to conduct polite conversation with

foreigners. >> hello, i would like to make a reservation for four people. >> yes, of course. what time would you like to come in? >> it's chockful of advice on what certain nationalities prefer. it claims brits like to be called by their first names, brazilians like wi-fi and the japanese wait until they are back home to make criticisms. these are all national stereotypes, of course. i wonder how most people would characterize the french? maybe as being a bit rude or stand-offish, right? and that's exactly why paris had to institute this "get friendly" program in the first place. by the way, you might wonder what will be the world's most visited city in 2013? well, according to a study by mastercard, it's bangkok, the first asian city to ever take the crown. the correct answer to our gps challenge question is a, eritra. sadly ihas not intended that

freedom to the media. it is ranked dead last at 179, right behind north korea, turk men stan and syria. one final note. in a recent story on global shipping, we overstated the wait time for ships at the panama canal. according to the canal authority's own records, the average time for a ship to wait and transit through the canal was 25.66 hours. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. stay tuned for "reliable sources." when the supreme court issued a pair of rulings boosting same-sex marriage, the only real question was how far the media would go in treating it as a victory. >> the political winds on this are now blowing so hard in one direction that the idea we will go back is almost unimaginable in any state in the country. >> in december i can only imagine what this day feels lik